Rachel Van Dyken Read Online Free PDF

escape him as h e rotated to face the pathetic , undersized challenger .
    The pilot bored his eyes into his opponent’s scarlet face, imagining his own gaze as liquid steel, melting the resolve of the vastly overmatched defender of the woman’s honor. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he spat .
    Out of the foggy corner of his vision, Blaine noticed a few scattered patrons, mostly women and their reluctant companions , slipp ing qui et ly out the front door. It didn’ t faze him. The telegram had roused his buried anger, and the slight to his masculine pride whipp ed it into a frenzy within him. He clenched and relaxed his fists in turn .
    “You are making a big mistake, Buddy,” Blaine whispered, leaning forward to meet his much shorter opponent’ s eyes. Anger coursed through him, but he waited . Rather than throw the first punch in an uneven match-up, he would bait the little man into making a critical error. This way he could claim he had warned the fellow – that the guy just wouldn’t listen to reason.
    Beneath the howls and hoots of the boys gathering around them, exasperation creased the man’s brow. Almost as if in slow motion, he cocked his left arm backwards and sent an awkward roundhouse swing sailing toward Blaine’s jaw. Ordinarily, the captain would have dodged it, but the whiskey had wreaked havoc on his reaction time, so he could do nothing more than watch the fist come flying to ward his right eye.
    T he force of the blow snapped Blaine's head to the left, but even in the desperate defense of his manhood , the smaller man could do nothing more than momentarily daze Blaine. Luckily, the whiskey ’s effects were two-fold… it doubled as a painkiller , and he didn’t feel a thing.
    A collective gasp of breath sucked the rumbling from the room, and silence settled uneasily into its place, as the remaining patrons waited for the inevitable retaliating rage . He could hear his own heart beating, and he l evel ed his sight s and locked on the target, in the same way he had done when he had flown over German territory during the war and sighted an enemy craft.
    A visible shiver shook the man before him.
    And then Blaine cold-cocked him.
    Patrick and the boys leaped at him at once , cheering and pounding him on the back in congratulations. He brushed them off in annoyance a nd stalked to the bar, the muscle twitching in his jaw. His bottle was empty, and he was still standing. Time to remedy that situation.
    “Another bottle of whiskey, Duke,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
    “Not a chance, Blaine. You’ve had enough , ” the bartender insisted . Blaine regarded him wi th an ic y glare, weighing the possible battle against his altered judgment.
    Suddenly , a light hand rested on his still tense forearm , distracting him from his current mission . He turned blearily to the woman draped over his right side . She smiled seductively up at him and traced her fingers up and down his flexed bicep lightly .
    “Oh, Captain Graham, I’m just so sorry about that. The beast practically forced me to go dancing with him , even though I told him I just wanted my beauty rest.” Her southern drawl caressed his foggy awareness and entranced him momentarily. “You’re so… confident , Captain. You were so quiet before, I thought maybe you didn’t... I mean, I had no idea you felt so –” she drew close enough for him to feel her breath on his ear , “—strongly about me.”
    Blaine gazed at her a moment. Her brown eyes tantalized him with fickle deception. No. Not even for a meaningless roll in the hay.
    “I don’t,” he stated with a hint of cold steel in his voice , then took her wrist between his finger and thumb a nd tossed it away from his arm.
    He spun on his heel to stalk out, but as he did the whole pub reeled around him, and he felt himself careen face-forward to the knotted wooden floor. A s the darkness encompassed him , Duke’s deep voice washed over him . “ Patrick, Tony, you